Draco's Family
by Eaglesgirl
Summary: Harry and Hermione work for the Ministry of Magic. They are sent to check on a former death eater, enemy, and classmate, and find themselves in over their heads.


Summary: Harry and Hermione work for the Ministry of Magic. They are sent to check on a former death eater, enemy, and classmate, and find themselves in over their heads.

WARNING: This is angsty and rather dark. I cried writing this. People will die. Be warned.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or any of the characters.

* * *

**Draco's Family**

"Of all the cases we could have gotten today, it just had to be Malfoy, didn't it?" Hermione said darkly as they walked toward an apartment building reserved for former death eaters.

"Just calm down Hermione. Getting yourself worked up won't help." Harry soothed. "Anyway, this is just a short little check-up. We'll be in and out."

"What's the apartment number?" Hermione asked.

"4C." Harry responded looking down at the sheet he had scribbled Malfoy's information on.

"What else should we know?"

"He has a wife. She's named Christine. No children or pets listed from the last visit. He also has no access to Malfoy Manor or the Malfoy fortune." Harry said.

"Ah, so he has to live among the simple folk now." Hermione said. "Finally."

Walking up to the door labeled as 4C, Harry knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again.

"You won't find them there." Someone called weakly.

"What?" Harry asked turning around. He was faced by an extremely thin and ill looking child being held by an almost skeletal Pansy Parkinson.

"Draco and Christine don't live there anymore. They didn't have money to pay rent." The child in Pansy's arms began to whimper. She quickly turned from Hermione and Harry and continued down the hall, bouncing the child in an attempt to calm it.

"Harry, send a patronus message to headquarters." Hermione sighed. "I hate having to chase after them."

Harry sent the message. "Would you like to break down the door, or should I?" Harry asked.

"You can." Hermione said stepping back.

Harry kicked open the door. It revealed a room no more than 3 meters wide by 4 meters long. There was barely anything in the apartment. Two blankets lay by the far wall. One was rolled up to be a pillow. The other was horribly thin and worn and lay abandoned on the ground. The only other thing in the room was an extinguished candle, the wick almost completely burned down, on its side.

Hermione then entered through a door to a small bathroom. All that was there was a toilet, a cracked sink, and a dirty tub.

Hermione came back out into the main room and met up with Harry who had just exited the kitchen. "There's no food in there. No pots or pans. No glasses. Nothing but cabinets."

A patronus in the shape of a tiger came and engulfed Harry. "They found him." He told Hermione. "He's in the park about a block from here. We have to hurry. They can't get him to cooperate."

..

When Harry and Hermione arrived at the park, they were surprised at what they saw. Draco Malfoy, who had spent his years at Hogwarts playing the bully, was crying over the frail body of a woman.

"Don't touch her!" He screeched when someone had come towards them.

Draco was thin, Hermione noticed, much too thin. If possible, he looked more skeletal than Pansy did. His skin was sallow and much paler than she remembered it.

Draco pulled the woman closer. Hermione slowly started toward them, careful not to alert Draco of her approach. She was close enough to hear him talking to his wife.

"We'll be alright. Just hold on. I'll find help. I promise that I will. I'll make it all better. I swear." Draco whispered frantically.

The woman was shaking and gasping for breath. Draco pulled her closer. Hermione started to slowly inch forward.

"Don't leave me, Christine." Draco whispered in a broken voice. Hermione was close enough now to see the tears seeping from his eyes.

"I love you, Draco. Don't forget." Christine said. She tried to give him a small smile.

"Please, Christine. Please don't give up. You're all I have." Draco stroked her cheek. "I only live for the two of you. I have no purpose otherwise." Draco kissed her forehead. "I love you."

Hermione knelt down on the other side of Christine. "She needs to see a healer." Hermione stated.

Draco looked up, but seemed unconcerned that Hermione was so close. "I've tried. They all refuse to see her. They say it's a matter of principle." Draco responded bitterly.

"What? Why would anyone refuse to treat her?" Hermione asked.

"Maybe you don't remember what my father did during the war. My name is the most hated in the whole of the wizarding world. Even other former death eater families shun mine. Anyone who helps cause the death of a Malfoy would be celebrated." Draco looked down at his wife who was now struggling to keep her eyes open. "I'm afraid everyone will get their wish." He said nodding to his wife.

"I can get her to a healer without having to give her name. They'll never have to know she's your wife." Hermione offered looking at the vulnerable woman.

"What's the catch?" Draco asked.

"You come with us to the ministry." Hermione said.

"No." Christine whispered.

"I have to." Draco said. "You need to see a healer. I need you to be better."

"Look at us, Draco. We'll never be better." Christine choked out. "I can feel myself dying. I need you to be there when I do."

"No. You can't die. The healers can help." Draco said.

"No." Christine said again.

"We need to talk to your husband regardless of whether or not you choose to see a healer." Harry said standing behind Hermione. "Will you see the healer or should we leave you here on the ground?"

Before Christine could answer, Draco called out, "she'll see the healer."

Draco kissed his wife one last time before he allowed her to be taken from his grasp. Andrew, one of Harry and Hermione's coworkers took the woman to St. Mungo's.

Hermione and Harry each took one of Draco's arms and pulled him to his feet and started toward the Ministry.

..

Hermione stood behind the two-way mirror looking into the room where Draco and Harry sat.

"So, your wife's pregnant?" Harry began.

Draco nodded and a small smile crept up on his lips.

"How far along?"

"Eight months."

"It's your first child?" Harry asked.

The smile faded. "Yes and no."

"What does that mean?"

"Christine has been pregnant four times before. All of them have turned into miscarriages or stillbirths." Draco wiped at his eyes. "The last one was a set of twins. Girls. We named them Belinda and Melina."

"Why isn't this in your wife's medical records?"

"Like I said, I couldn't find a healer that would see her. She gave birth on the floor of our apartment."

"How many stillbirths has she had?"

"The twins and her first pregnancy. It was a boy. We named him Severus."

"When did she loose the other two pregnancies?"

"The second one, she was four months. The third, she was about four and a half."

"Any idea why she lost them?"

"Malnutrition is my guess."

"But everyone in those apartments are given some food to supplement whatever they buy with their paychecks."

Draco gave a bitter laugh. "You get a loaf a bread and a bucket of water once every two weeks. That really doesn't go very far when you don't have a job."

"Then maybe you should have gotten one."

"Potter, they took our wands and broke them in half then threw them in a fire. That cuts out ninety five percent of the jobs in the wizarding world. Every person ever remotely connected with the death eaters are competing for those jobs. They aren't really that helpful either. Pansy Parkinson got one of the best paying jobs offered to us, and she still only eats one meal a week to make sure that her kid gets a small meal every day. And like I told Granger in the park, my family is hated above all the others. I've been trying to find a job for years. I was able to keep one for almost two years before they kicked me out when they merged my job with another one. Did you know, they've been offering incentives to witches and wizards for taking the jobs they would otherwise have to offer to us? We can't go to the muggle world, we're not allowed."

Hermione was having a hard time digesting this, Harry seem to also.

Draco began again. "Christine doesn't deserve this."

"If her family hadn't been connected to the death eaters…"

"They weren't."

"So she joined?"

"No. She was a muggle-born. She's from Ravenclaw, two years behind us. You know, the ministry won't let her send an owl to her parents. She hasn't seen or talked to them for five years.

"How has this pregnancy lasted for so long?" Harry asked.

"I've been making her eat everything I can get." Draco answered. "It isn't much though. I'm afraid that it won't be enough."

"When was the last time you ate?" Harry asked.

Draco thought for a minute. "Three weeks maybe?" He guessed. "It was during that really bad thunderstorm. The lightning hit the tree in the park near the apartments. A few of the trees caught fire before anyone could put it out."

Hermione thought, yes, she remembered. It had happened twenty days ago.

"What's your current address?"

"We don't have one." Draco said. "We didn't have enough to pay rent for the apartment, and that's the cheapest one around."

"There was nothing in the apartment when we went today; where is everything?"

"We sold it to pay rent." Draco said. "The kitchen stuff went first. We figured we only had the bread, so having all the pots and pans and dishes were worthless. Then went the couch. After that was the bedroom set, then the mattress, then the sheets. Finally, we sold all the little things, the books, picture frames, candles, our clothes and shoes. When the landlord kicked us out he said we couldn't take our two remaining blankets. He said maybe being cold at night would teach us a lesson about getting rent in on time. This was all I was able to keep." Draco said pulling a moving picture out of his shirt pocket.

The picture showed a much healthier looking Draco in black pants and a blue shirt holding the hand of a beautiful woman wearing a simple white dress. Both were smiling and holding hands. Picture Draco brought picture Christine's hand to his lips.

"That was our wedding day." Draco said softly. "I wonder if I was being selfish when I asked her to marry me. I knew it would be hard, but I never imagined it would be like this."

There was a knock on the door of the interrogation room. A man named Paul walked in. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Malfoy's wife has gone into labor."

"No." Draco said jumping up. "It's too soon."

Hermione came around and she, Harry, and Paul escorted Draco to St. Mungo's.

..

Two hours later, Draco Malfoy had a living, breathing daughter. She was named Kristina. Draco was ecstatic that one of his children had finally lived, but she was by no means healthy.

Kristina was malnourished and severely under weight. Her lungs were weak as well. Draco was told that he could only see, but not touch or hold the little girl. It worried that healers that Kristina didn't move much and that she was too weak to cry, but she seemed determined to get better.

Christine, however, had lapsed into a coma. Her systems were slowly starting to fail and the healers were at a loss for what to do.

With no money to pay for surgeries, Draco had to resign himself to the reality that his wife would die much too young.

..

The next morning at 7 AM, Hermione and Harry relived the guards that had stood in front of Christine's door overnight.

Around an hour later, Hermione and Harry followed a healer into the room. He checked the woman over while Draco held her hand.

The healer shook his head. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. Her body is too far gone to save her."

"How long does she have?" Draco asked with red-rimmed eyes.

"It will take a miracle for her to survive past noon today."

There was a sharp intake of breath from Draco.

Harry and Hermione took up their position again when the healer left, leaving Draco to spend the last few hours of his wife's life with her sleeping form.

..

Christine Baker-Malfoy died at 10:52 AM that day. Heart broken, Draco was turned out of the hospital and told that he could come to see his daughter for an hour everyday until she was well enough to be released. Christine's body was given to Draco bury.

He buried her next to their stillborn babies in the nearby forest.

Draco went to the hospital to see Kristina everyday.

A week after Christine's death, Draco was found in an alley beside St. Mungo's. Someone had Crucio-ed him. His body had been too weak. He was dead.

Four days later, Kristina was found dead in her crib in the nursery. She had been born with a heart defect that the healers hadn't caught.

Draco had been right. There was celebration, and the Ministry fueled the party.

Hermione and Harry were both disgusted and quit the day after Kristina's death. Pansy Parkinson showed them to the gravesite of Christina and her children. They buried Draco and Kristina.

..

A year later, _Kristina's Law_ was passed. Hermione had been the driving force behind it. It assured medical care to former death eaters and financial assistance when they were out of a job. Regardless of whom it helped, it didn't change the injustices done to Draco and his family.

Harry personally went to Christine's parents house in London and delivered the picture of their daughter and Draco as well as a picture of their granddaughter Kristina.

Slowly, Draco, Christine, and Kristina were forgotten.


End file.
